We talked about what we would look for in a club, who we would like to attend, and what we would like to get out of the perfect club.

The formula we came up with consisted of:

• Owner, director and partners only
• Minimum turnover of £2m+ or 10+ staff
• Only 1 person per company
• Only 1 law firm, 1 bank and 1 accountant

In October 2007, we set up the Brighton & Hove Business Lunch Club, followed a year later by the Crawley & Gatwick Business Lunch Club. The clubs have thrived and today have a combined membership of nearly 100 senior business figures (sussexbusinesslunchclubs.com).

Earlier this year, I started talking to the Eastbourne & District Chamber of Commerce and Eastbourne Borough Council about bringing the club format to my home town of Eastbourne. They were both very supportive of the idea and keen to get involved.

My next stop was to find a top Eastbourne law firm, top accountancy firm and a top High Street bank with client lists suited to my target audience. Gaby Hardwicke, OBC The Accountants and Barclays fitted the bill and were delighted to get involved.

My final call was to Jonathan Webley at The Grand Hotel. The club needs a top venue where excellence of food and service are guaranteed. Jonathan bought into the concept immediately.

I am therefore delighted to announce the launch of the Eastbourne & District Business Lunch Club.

Our club is by invitation only. You have received this letter because we think you would add value to the club and, more importantly for you, we believe that you would get something out of it.

We will meet once a month for an excellent two course lunch. We will have a quality speaker and we will have some entertaining guests.

The first meeting will be on Friday July 13 at The Grand Hotel on Eastbourne’s seafront. It will be our treat and allows us to give you a flavour of the potential of the club.

We have 50 places available for the launch, and seats will be filled on a “first come, first served” basis.

At the second meeting, Friday August 10, you will pay your own way (£30 per head). You must also decide if you wish to be part of the club going forward. The cost of annual membership is £250+vat., plus the monthly costs of your lunch and drinks.

We hope to see you there.

The popular Eastbourne Premier Breakfast Club takes place on Friday May 18. We will have nearly 30 of the town’s largest employers attending, including a first time visit from Powerplay Direct.

Gavin Fletcher, tournament director with The Lawn Tennis Association will also be there to update members on the fantastic AEGON international tennis championships, which come to Eastbourne next month.

The club provides an opportunity for Eastbourne Borough Council and our local MP to update business leaders on their work over the last quarter. Council chief executive Rob Cottrill will talk about the fantastic season of summer events and new developments, while Stephen Lloyd MP will reveal more details about the re-launch of The Eastbourne Carnival and the new dangers facing the Eastbourne DGH.

A Royal Business Lunch Club

In case you had not noticed, it’s the Queen’s diamond jubilee this year. So who better to address the Brighton & Hove Business Lunch Club this Friday than the Queen’s representative in East Sussex, Lord Lieutenant Peter Field.

Peter is a good friend of the club and will be explaining about his increased workload this year and what Sussex is doing to celebrate the Jubilee.

And as if that were not enough, the new leader of Brighton & Hove Borough Council, Jason Kitcat, will be making his debut speech to the business community at our Friday meeting. Jason will be attending as a guest of club stalwart Andy Cheesman of City Cabs. Many thanks Andy!

We’re expecting about 35 business leaders at the Brighton meeting, which takes place at the Sussex County Cricket Club ground in Hove. Lunch will be followed by an opportunity to watch first-class cricket, as Guernsey take on the might of Canada.

]]> http://www.cobbpr.com/blog/2012/05/17/a-friday-of-fine-happenings-at-cobb-pr/feed/ 0 http://www.cobbpr.com/blog/2012/05/03/chilly-in-the-slips/ http://www.cobbpr.com/blog/2012/05/03/chilly-in-the-slips/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 15:59:57 +0000 admin http://www.cobbpr.com/blog/?p=654 By Tim Cobb

It’s cold and wet, so that must mean the start of the cricket season. Cobb PR shares a box at the Sussex County Cricket Club Hove ground and I spent a morning with my mop and brush to get the place ready for action.

I also took advantage of a break in the rain to ask my fellow box-holders to pop along for a start-of-season photocall. And don’t we all look lovely?

This year, we have a couple of new faces on the block to share our box. Parker Building Supplies and Kingspan are two excellent companies with a good pedigree in the area.

And the old guard – Knill James, City Cabs, and Inn Brighton – are back again for another season of action.

Here’s to a great season!

As you can see by visiting our homepage, we have integrated a live twitter feed into our website.

Integrating twitter into your website doesn’t just mean supplying a logo or link which redirects people to twitter, it means your latest tweets are displayed on your website, acting as an instant news feed.

Regardless of who you are or what you do, there are many advantages to integrating twitter into your website.

• Having a twitter feed on your website means that when people are faced with your homepage they will immediately see that you or your company is tweeting on a regular basis. This provides them with an instant idea on your personality and also an accessible link for them to follow you if your tweets entice or interest them.

• It shows you are current and up-to-date with trends, social media, and are actively using them within your business and lifestyle. People will therefore assume that the content on your website is also current and up-to-date, which is good as nobody likes an out of date website. Make sure you include a time stamp on your tweets so that people can see how recent they are.

• Times are constantly changing and different technology can help you interact with different people. You can bring your business or service to a completely new audience who would never see you otherwise. It is always better to do business with someone who is expanding their knowledge and changing with the world around them then living in the past.

• Having a twitter feed on your website instantly shows that you are a legitimate person or business. An active blog, social media links and contact info are all good signs of websites legitimacy and will encourage people to contact you.  

• You can keep your twitter profile up to date easily and it doesn’t require the time and effort a new blog post or news article would. Even if it is just re-tweeting an article you have seen and think would be of interest to your followers, it is still a worthy tweet. Nobody wants to see constant self promotion, they want to see your personality and that you are ‘real’. 

Following on from the success of Instagram, it appears there’s a new kid in town called Pinterest. This kid will ‘pin’ anything and everything.

Pinterest is a concept where people pin pictures based on their emotions. There is very little thinking involved and when you are fed up of seeing news feeds full of moaning and boasting, pinterest provides a light relief. You can create mood boards based on your loves, hates and generally on anything you feel like. Others members can then ‘repin’ this if they like it, share it, or comment without feeling the opinion they are expressing is solely their own. People can share common ground without being judged.

Brands are using sites such as Instagram and Pinterest to promote themselves and their products in a different way. Posting a picture to a network of followers drives them to comment and retweet to a wider audience. The user can interact with the brand allowing a form of advertising which is proving hugely successful. The public feel like they are getting an insight behind the scenes, viewing new products before the newspapers or magazines even get a chance to print them. A sneak peek behind a catwalk show of one of the models in the hottest trends, or a live image from a red carpet event, allows viewers to feed their celebrity culture habit.

With a staggering 80% of pins being repined in comparison to 1.4% of tweets being retweeted, maybe Instagram and Pinterest will be celebrating their sixth birthdays before we know it.

Our Brighton offices are now nearly complete with the finishing touches being made in the shape of a shiny new glass desk and some swanky red leather chairs to jazz the place up. Hopefully everything will be finished in the next couple of weeks for all of you to see.

Chris started the week with man’s best friend at a dog micro-chipping day down at Pets for Homes, courtesy of Eastbourne Homes. On Tuesday he then had a spot of filming at Whiteman & Parrish to record a pre budget piece for BBC TV, whilst squeezing some more filming in today for the BBC with Ticketmedia on the economy in the south east. When he wasn’t chipping dogs or on set, he managed to listen to the coverage of Cheltenham races, but strictly no gambling of course!

Matt has been shoe shopping in the office helping The Horder Centre Charity in their search for celebrity shoes to feature in their auction happening later this year. He has also been helping Parafix in the exciting sponsorship of the Sussex Senior Cup and the promotion of their recent deal with Sussex FA. Office DIY guru Matt also found time to hang up our certificate from Chesnut Tree Hospice which we are very proud of.

Certificate from Chesnut Tree Hospice

Friday has been a day of indulgence.

Amy, the newest addition to the Cobb PR family attended her first Premier Breakfast Club in Eastbourne and as always The Grand Hotel produced a breakfast so good that it would have been rude for us not to eat it all. It was great to hear Rob Cottrill, Stephen Lloyd and Jeff Collard speak about the exciting plans Eastbourne has for the summer and beyond.

Julie had a meeting at the spent culinary arts studio at the University of Brighton, which involved eating copious amounts of delicious cake made by the students.

Janet and Tim then headed over to host the Brighton & Hove Business Lunch Club at the Hotel Du Vin which featured great food and great people. An economic round up was done by Nik Askaroff and there was a talk by Albion In The Community.

After badgering Tim all week to open his supply of Cadbury cream eggs, we finally got to tuck in to the leftovers when Janet returned from lunch.

After a busy week it’s now time to sit down, enjoy the weekend, and do it all again next week!

As Google glosses over the fact that it will be extracting information on its customers, it is keen to emphasis that the user’s experience will actually be enhanced. Google states that their services such as Gmail, YouTube and Blogger will link better together to create a single user profile, and services will improve over time to allow users to get the most from the web.

Evidently it should enhance the experience users have and provide more relevant information rather than pages and pages of unrelated material, however many feel that Google is abusing its power to target advertisers.

Many users of the internet probably wouldn’t be put off by the change in Google’s privacy rules, however those that are should just follow a few simple rules to make sure they limit the amount of information Google can access.

• To avoid your information being collected stay logged out of your Gmail account whilst conducting searches, or use a different login for each site
• Google can collect data if you are logged out but only by the computer’s IP address instead of you as an individual
• Clear your browser history or cache at least once a week to remove items such as tracking cookies that save information.

So next time you use Google to search for something, remember Google is watching you.

In the world of PR we all spend lots of time focussed on bringing in brand new clients. Once we have them, we’re off again to find another one. All too often, we ignore the rich seam of gold that this new client could provide through referrals to some of their customers.

So what exactly is a referral? Well it can be as simple as a satisfied customer saying something nice about you to somebody else, a kind of “word of mouth” marketing. But the more systems you introduce, the more beneficial the referrals become.

Step 1

Assuming you are providing a quality service to your client, and that your relationship is a strong one, ask them if they have any customers that might be interested in your services. Unless you have misjudged the state of your relationship, the client should feel comfortable offering you a contact.

Step 2

Silver Standard referral: check with your client that you can use his name as an introduction. When approval is given, you are in a position to make that call.

Step 3

Gold Standard referral: be cheeky. Ask your existing client if he would have time to make a personal recommendation for you, either through a phone call or a letter. If he agrees, you’re half way there. The next step is to ensure he makes that call. Explain when you are planning to phone this “warm lead” and confirm that this gives him enough time to do his bit. How will you know if that call has been made? Simple … the referral will either accept or decline your call.

Step 4

Have a prepared script for the call. Don’t make it too inflexible, but have an idea of what you want to say, where you would like the conversation to lead to, and what would constitute a successful call for you.

Step 5

Don’t sit back and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Go back to your original client and thank him very much for the referral. Let him know how you got on and whether you think any business will flow from it. Your client will feel pleased that he has played a part in helping you win new business.

Step 6

Strike while the iron is hot. Ask him for another referral!

Referrals are a numbers game. The more times you ask for one, the more times you will receive one. If you have 50 clients, and ask each one for a referral, that could be 50 potential new clients. Imagine the boost to your business if you converted even 10% of them into new clients.

Remember: if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

 by Tim Cobb

Today however you can’t walk down the high street without seeing QR codes emblazoned on billboards or even on the packaging of your favourite chocolate bar. The most popular way of reading them for many people is through a smartphone application, some of which even have the ability to create codes with your own embedded data (with anything from a website address to GPS location information).

Needless to say QR codes can create a fantastic marketing opportunity. Companies are using them as a key part of their marketing platforms, including advertising their websites, updating consumers with real-time information and promoting special offers and competitions.

Below are five steps needed for a successful QR code marketing campaign:

Step 1 – Why are you doing it?

QR codes are about functionality and marketing. Anything that helps people with their day-to-day lives is going to deliver better results. Therefore you should be 100% sure about the purpose of your code:

• Are you looking to inform consumers about one product or a complete range?

• What are you hoping to get back – a phone call, an email, a ‘like’ on Facebook, a ‘follow’ on Twitter?

• Are you offering some sort of promotion or coupon to incentivise buyer behaviour?

• Is the purpose to make people aware of a video, product suggestions, a catalogue?

Being clear about the purpose of your QR campaign is vital so you can keep on track.

Step 2 – What are you offering?

Once you have defined your campaign purpose, you need to let customers know what it is that you’re offering. This is usually done by a simple sentence next to your code, letting people know what they’ll find when they scan it.

It’s no surprise that if the pitch says things like ‘Scan here for a free gift’ or ‘Scan this code for a cheap price’ then your code will receive high scan rates. Just make sure you deliver what you’re offering, otherwise people will soon lose interest.

Step 3 – Make it look good

On first glance it may seem difficult to make a QR code look good, however codes can be altered in many different ways to increase their appeal.

Looks obviously matter in advertising, and you’ll find that people will scan a designer code far more than just a black and white mish-mash of squares. Don’t just stop at the code itself though, make sure the mobile landing page is up to scratch and looks just as good as the code.

Ideally use a mobile site as the landing page, they are FAR easier to navigate on a handheld device rather than a cumbersome desktop site with a billion links and animations. If you have to use a desktop site, make sure it is clean and simple and gets straight to the point, but it might be worth investing and going mobile – this also has the added advantage of being able to easily track campaign analytics.

Step 4 – What type of scans are you getting?

Contrary to what you might think, the number of daily scans your code gets isn’t as important as the engagement time your code is generating.

If people are spending over three minutes (or more) on your landing page, then your code and campaign is a success. The idea is to get people more involved and, when users spend a lot of time on your QR site, you know you have developed something special (and the person feels like yours is a brand worth their interaction).

Also worth watching is how many scans your code is getting over time, if your code is displayed on packaging or on a display in a shop window – it should be getting a constant amount of scans; providing you keep the landing page fresh with new content. Although if your QR code is published in a magazine or on TV then you can expect to see a big spike of scans then not much else. If your scan rate isn’t what you expect after the first week, then there is something wrong with your placement or promotion.

Step 5 – Have you achieved what you set out to do?

Don’t forget to look outside your code and landing page, you need to look beyond the QR experience and assess your results:

• Did more users sign up to your Facebook page?

• Did your website receive more hits?

• Did you get more followers on Twitter?

• Did more people offer a unique code at your store?

The QR code experience really is a fantastic way to link the physical world of marketing with the mobile web, it is limited only by your imagination and, the more creativity you can employ with your campaign the better rewards you’ll reap.

Sure, for catching up on the latest gossip and sharing amusing anecdotes with your friends it may not be the most appropriate platform (but I guess there is always Twitter and Facebook for that), but that’s not what people are on there for.

LinkedIn it seems is where business gets done.  Hundreds of thousands of senior executives from companies all over the world are signed up to the site, people from all the 500 fortune companies are on there, along with staff members from all the FTSE 100.

The statistics say it all, the increase of visitors to the site last year compared to 2010 was up a staggering 63% with 34 million unique users setting up profiles (according to internet analytics firm comScore). All that traffic meant it beat Myspace as the second most popular social network on the internet (behind the almighty Facebook).

Last year, market research company – Lab42, asked 500 people signed up to LinkedIn what they use the site for most…

Unsurprisingly, there is a large amount of job searching going on, but quite a lot more besides. The different tiers of business seem to use the site differently. Younger members use the site to post CV’s, portfolios and network for jobs, compared to the more experienced professionals, who are doing all sorts from promoting their company, to conducting market research, to the most important of all – winning new business.

So how do you do it?

•  Target keywords in searches that are central to the business your company wants to drum up, for example if you were an architect, you could search for ‘surveyor’, ‘contractor’, ‘developer’ etc. Then start to make a list of people/companies to contact; collate everything from their email address to postcode, then send them your latest online newsletter or whack a brochure in the post.

• Keep tabs on who is looking at your profile or your employees’ profiles. Then have a closer look at those companies and ask yourself the question: “Could I get work from them?” If the answer is yes, then identify their head honcho and get a brochure in the post to land on their desk the next day. Then follow up with a telephone call, email or InMail (LinkedIn’s internal messaging service).

• Do reconnaissance work, watch Google Analytics and see which domain names are visiting your website. If any of these are companies which you could get work from – head back to LinkedIn, find their profile then approach the top decision maker (in the previously mentioned ways).

• Set up a company profile, It’s probably not going to generate a bunch of leads but at least your organisation will have an increased presence online. Embed videos, banner images and add a live Twitter feed to your page, seek recommendations from previous clients. Do all this and it’ll help raise your company’s charisma.

• Who’s connected to one another? Try and discern patterns and see if companies are linked in some way – then if you end up doing work with one of them, they might be in a good position to recommend you to other similar businesses.

• Get involved in groups; there are absolutely loads on the site. Get involved within your target market and strike up conversations with the right people. Try and seek out groups with plenty of activity rather than ones with loads of members and, don’t just pitch all the time; respond to comments with considered content too.

Work won’t just come knocking at your door; you’ll need to focus a lot of effort to pull all of this off, although if you win just one or two contracts it will have been worth it.

Don’t forget too that there are others using similar tips and tricks, which could lead to them getting the inside scoop on your business and who you’re trying to connect to. Remember to always be aware about how transparent social media can be, so don’t give away too much!